How to manage marketing in a downturn

Camp Two is where you are a midsize company and are concerned that if you don't make cutbacks, or find a marketing solution that works, your business is going to suffer.

Camp Three is where you have a small business and have no choice but to find ways to save money and marketing seems like the simplest place to start.

But all three ways of thinking are wrong.

If marketing budgets are cut, all that really happens is this money is reallocated elsewhere. It then becomes a huge challenge to try to get your budgets increased again later. Even big brands require marketing through a downturn. It's a basic marketing principle: if people are not told that your service or your product are there, the chances are they will be told about someone else's and you’ll lose market share – the worst thing that could happen to you right now.

The secrets of good business? Stability, loyalty and bums on seats

Mr McCarthy, who has worked in the media industry for 32 years, said stability in management was important. Other key qualities were continuity in management, acknowledging and building on experience, loyalty, and knowledge. "These are the important things," he said. "A stable organisation will always do much better than an organisation that has churn."

For success, Mr McCarthy said it was necessary to minimise head office interference.

"Head offices are too dictatorial and interfering You need to set your discipline centrally and decentralise creativity," he said. "Let them breathe don't shut them up with head office bureaucratic nonsense."

Mr McCarthy said he was a believer in internal promotion and that good management creates a ready pool of talent.